AR-15 Review: Les Baer Police Special Carbine

Exclusive for AR15.com newsletter subscribers! Enter your e-mail in the box below for a free digital guide to ammunition. You’ll also receive e-newsletters from Gun Digest and partners full of more great information.

*

The Les Baer Police Special is designed to include every important feature a police officer wants, but none of the stuff he doesn’t and is an ideal home defense option.

The model that was tested exhibited no “receiver wiggle,” and locked up tight as a bank vault. When asked how he achieved such a tight mating of parts, Baer said, “We took our own prints and started eliminating the tolerances between parts.”

Les Baer Custom’s Police Special Carbine chambered in .223 Remington was such a success that the renowned rifle and pistol builder quickly followed up with additional AR models in new calibers.

“The Police Special is a 16-inch AR that was designed to include every important feature a police officer wants but none of the stuff he doesn’t,” Baer said. “I knew there was a need for a high performance rifle that could serve as either a patrol carbine or a high-energy tactical rifle.”

Most recently, Les Baer Custom added a few additional high-demand LE features, including a new LBC National Match carrier, a new collapsible stock and pistol grip package and an LBC flip-up front sight. And, the Police Special is now available in three high performance calibers instead of just one.

It’s loaded with businesslike features, and it’s intentionally devoid of the accessories that distract from its intended purpose.

Some of the features included in the newest version of the Police Special are such things as the LBC forged and machined upper and lower receiver, and a chromed LBC National Match bolt carrier.

One of my favorite features is the removable carry handle, which of course incorporates a rear sight. It can be quickly removed to expose an M1913 “Picatinny” flattop rail.

At the heart of this rifle are a precision bolt and extractor, and a 16-inch precision button-rifled steel barrel with a 1:8 twist to stabilize heavier .224 bullets.

Its six-position ATI collapsible stock has an adjustable cheek piece, and the grip is ATI as well. The steel parts are bead blast blued, and the aluminum parts are anodized. Two 30-round magazines were included in the setup tested.

At the muzzle, you’ll find a run-of-the-mill A2 style flash hider, but that’s where “standard” stops and the customization in manufacturing starts. This rifle features an LBC National Match chromed carrier.

“We have the patent on our carrier,” Baer said. “After the upper receiver is hard anodized it gets hand fitted. The little groves in the carrier keeps it centered in the receiver bore.”

One of the benefits of a Les Baer gun is the break-in process. Before it is shipped, every button-rifled gun is fired 60 to 80 times. After every five shots, the barrel is cleaned with Bortech solvent. That’s repeated eight to 10 times.

“On our single-point-cut barrels we average 120 rounds for a break-in,” Baer said. “It takes a lot longer to break them in. The break-in process seasons the barrel. You can tell a lot of difference on the long-term life of the barrel. If you don’t break it in they don’t group as tight, and after a thousand rounds, that’s where you see a difference. The barrels shoot tighter groups for a lot longer. It’s a time-consuming process, and it takes all day to break in just eight guns.”

All of this precision work wouldn’t perform to the standard of a guaranteed sub-MOA gun if it had a mil-spec trigger, so Baer added a single-stage Timney Match trigger group.

“All of our other guns have two-stage triggers, but nobody wants a two-stage in a patrol rifle,” Baer said. This trigger breaks at a clean four pounds.